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FIFA released a statement Friday morning saying that the International Football Association Board, the body that governs all rules in the sport, had “exceptionally” agreed “to allow male players in Canada to wear head covers.”

Aneel Samra, 18, plays with a soccer ball in his backyard, Wednesday, June 5, 2013 in Montreal. Samra has not been able to play organized soccer since last year due to his religious headgear. (Ryan Remiorz / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

In defending the ban’s rationale, the FSQ leaned heavily on a long-since-settled dispute between FIFA and female players who wear the hijab. The Islamic head covering had once been banned on safety grounds. FIFA overturned that decision in 2012, but continues to debate the optimal design of the headscarf.

The FSQ has been disingenuously using that process to underpin its own extraordinary veto on turbans.

“It’s the same thing as with the hijab,” FSQ president Brigitte Frot said earlier in the week, in attempting to justify the ban.

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“That’s why FIFA made a trial period to make sure that the equipment that is required for the girls is correct, and it’s secure. That’s the problem. That’s the main concern our board has. Because we’re following the FIFA rules. FIFA rules is FIFA rules.”

Not any more, they’re not. And they haven’t been for some time.

Further confusing the situation, the FSQ released a statement Friday afternoon saying it welcomed FIFA’s brushback “with enthusiasm and relief,” but fell short of immediately rescinding the ban. The federation plans to clarify its muddy position at a Saturday morning press conference.

Soccer is unique in that all players, leagues and associations around the world come under the authority of the Laws of the Game, which are enforced only by FIFA.

The Zurich-based body has the power to expel member organizations from the soccer community. In 2008, it briefly banned Peru from international competition after a leadership spat in that country.

It would be far more difficult for it to take punitive measures on one provincial federation within a larger, fully compliant national body.

As such, FIFA has done little more than remove the fig leaf behind which Trot and the FSQ were hiding.

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The Canadian Soccer Association has already isolated Quebec teams with its own ban, confining the province’s youth teams within their own borders and preventing nationally certified referees from officiating there. If nothing changes, Montreal would likely lose its hosting role at the upcoming FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup in 2014 and the more prestigious Women’s World Cup in 2015.

This has no effect on MLS’ Montreal Impact, who fall directly under the stewardship of the CSA.

Frustratingly, FIFA appeared to offer a rationale in the last paragraph of its missive to which the FSQ might conceivably cling on Saturday and beyond.

“This matter (the playing-field legality of the turban) will once again be discussed by the IFAB in October 2013, before a final decision is reached at the next Annual General Meeting of the IFAB, taking place in March 2014.”

The main point offered here is that the FSQ and its supporters within the Parti Quebecois no longer have any legal justification for the ban.

Frot also admitted this week that they have no health and safety rationale as well.

Asked to provide data proving the turban poses some risk, she mystifyingly responded, “We don’t know. And because we don’t know, we don’t want to take any chances.”

So will this end now? In all likelihood. It’s become a source of international embarrassment for the province.

What’s more important is how quickly the FSQ’s decision was fully exposed for what it is — a bigoted stance that has no medical, statistical or legal backing of any kind.

If the FSQ wants to continue along this track, they do so entirely alone, and in defiance of a world that has passed them by, as well as common decency.

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